Does anyone have any contact information for prop desks at either a major firm like JP Morgan or Citibank, etc., or a private prop shop trading for real money. Im not looking to get involved with a or a small brokerage or an over-leveraged prop firm that needs my capital and wont show a balance sheet. I trade Eminis, technically. Most trades are intraday. I have been trading OPM 7 years and have a letter from my broker verifying a 3 year average return of 74%. My strategy is coded and backtests at near 68% winners with a 3-1 win to loss ratio.
What is the median return? Or even better, just state the year-to-year win/loss for all the years you have been trading it. The Average is a very misleading statistic. You could have had a bunch of little losing years, got lucky during the bubble years and had a killer year, and then went back to being a net loser. But it doesn't matter. In every firm that I am aware of, they will want the code to the system, after which they will back test it to verify it. They will then forward test it to see how it does on unseen data. If you pass all those tests, you then get a deal. nitro
Of course they want the code. But as soon as you give them the code, their interest in purchasing the system will suddenly vaporize.
Not necessarily. If the deal is structured correctly, and the people involved are of a high standard, this will not happen. Further, what you are really "hiring" is the person anyway, not some system. I have never seen an intraday ES system that doesn't deteriorate over time. Creative system writers know this and are constantly trying to stay in step with the market. Firms that don't know this and try to undercut their creative resources probably won't be around long as word of their deceit begins to circle the very very small world that is the trading community. nitro
In general, IB prop desks are not interested in technical traders who simply trade futures outright long or short.
There is no way I will let anyone see my codes. People in this industry, or in general can not and should not be trusted with such proprietary information. I am more than willing to run the backtest for them live, but thats it. As far as you your saying "Further, what you are really "hiring" is the person anyway, not some system. I have never seen an intraday ES system that doesn't deteriorate over time." I agree in 99% of the time. Most systems are built in a specific market trends and conditions and as such dont adapt well to change. If a system is a fast moving price/volume only reaction system, it can react to changing trends, especially when it trades on shorter time frames, such as mine is.
I have been looking for seed to get a commodity pool seeded and have pledges from a few large institutions for significant capital inflows, but no one wants to be the 1st man in. Most want to see 1 good quarter with OPM before they fund me. I am willing to give up equity but incubation capital is tight. I dont have enough liquid capital to make a run of it, so I am exploring other venues, hence my post.
Good luck man, I-Banks have been very cautious with their prop operations ever since their blowout in the tech bubble crash. I remember interviewing for the JP Morgan equity prop desk in 2002 just to find out that the position was canceled a few weeks later. A few months later, that whole department was eliminated. Regardless, your performance seems very good. Why would you want to share your profits with an I-Bank?
1)If you been trading OPM for 7 years then why don't you start a fund with that capital. Even if it's not much, or you don't have too mcuh money to start a fund, it really doesn't cost much to off the ground. You can get a fund setup for 5k-10k all in. Even if it's not big, you list with all the hedge fund sites when they allow you. If your perfrormance is good, slowly but surely, investors will find your fund, and invest in it, little by little. Insitutions won't come for a while, but if you do well, and are consistent, THE MONEY WILL FIND YOU, I promise you that.
Then the only way you're going to get money is to do as others suggest on this thread - start a hedge fund where you will have "audits" on a yearly basis and evetually you will get noticed. nitro